My dad has a preference for oatmeal-based cookies, so I made a lot of oatmeal+fruit+chocolate cookies growing up. Somehow that habit has been sadly sidelined by "other" cookies and I don't make oatmeal cookies very often any more. Caleb made such great oatmeal cookies while we were at Michigan that for years I didn't make any. Then too, oatmeal cookies aren't a guaranteed crowd-pleaser and I've always felt like personal preferences on spice level, fruit/nut mix-ins, chewy vs. crispy, etc. are even more divisive when it comes to an oatmeal cookie than a "traditional" chocolate chip cookie. Happily, Baked Sunday Morning's is here to shake me out of my cookie rut with this Sunday's scheduled "Oatmeal Cherry Walnut Cookie" recipe. Since I fall into the category of people who cannot abide nuts in their oatmeal cookies (and so does Caleb), I decided to replace the chopped toasted walnuts with an equivalent weight of Guittard mini chocolate chips, thus resulting in these delicious oatmeal cherry chocolate chip cookies.
The dough for these oatmeal cherry chocolate chip cookies doesn't take very long to make, however they do require a 6 hour rest in the fridge prior to baking, which was almost a disaster since I completely missed that line on my first (and second) read-through of the recipe. I was planning to bring these to a beer-making party that started at 1pm, so I wound up waking up at 5am so that I could make the dough in time for it to rest before I baked the cookies. The things I do for dessert...
Thank goodness I was able to get these cookies made in time for the party, because the recipe yields a huge batch of cookies. I stopped counting, but I must have gotten at least a 50-60 cookie yield out of these recipe. The cookies are small, but they need to be in order to bake evenly and they pack a ton of flavor.
Initially, I was worried I wouldn't like these cookies because the description describes the cookies as being chewy on the inside but crisp on the outside, and since they're so small, I had trouble imagining a truly chewy center. You have to be careful to make these all the same size, and not to squish down the cookies too much (or not squish them down enough), so they bake evenly. I used a #60 (1 tablespoon) cookie scoop to form my cookie balls, then gently pushed the tops down a centimeter or two. In my opinion, the stated baking time of 12-14 minutes is too long; I baked my cookies for 10 minutes and my cookies were tawny brown around the edges and just set in the middle. The middles may look a little unset still, but they will set as they cool.
Everyone at the party liked these cookies, from the 17-month-old almost-toddler to the "I'm not a dessert person" person (and everyone in between). You can definitely taste the spices, but they provide warmth without being overpowering. The recipe doesn't specify the dried cherry type, so I used tart Montmorency cherries. The tart cherries provide interesting texture, additional chewiness, and jammy flavor, pairing perfectly with the oats without adding any sweetness. Full-sized chocolate chips would have been too much, but mini chocolate chips are the perfect size here, adding rich chocolate flavor without overpowering the rest of the cookie.
For the original recipe, head over the Baked Sunday Mornings and check out how the other bakers felt about these cookies while you're there!
